…and the classroom stars aligned – in class use of the PHaVE dictionary

It was one of those lessons where things just seemed to flow smoothly and in this case from a routine exam revision session to using a program (the PHaVE dictionary) I had hacked up not too long ago (is my head getting too big?).

The class was TOEIC revision, and we were doing some exercises related to part 5 and part 6 of the exam (the grammar/vocab parts).

One of the exercises was on phrasal verbs and this expansion activity listed some phrasal verb headers and asked students to check a dictionary to pick some particles and write example sentences.

Since I had the PHaVE dictionary available on englishbox (pirate box) on my phone I asked the students to connect to it and use that instead.

I was really pleased that they had a relevant task to use the PHaVE dictionary with as I had only demoed the dictionary in a previous session (as a resource to use outside class) and so not made much use of it in class until now.

The advantage of using such a restricted list as the PhAVE instead of a full-blown dictionary is speed of use which means more focus on the task at hand instead of depending on dictionary skill use (which is not to say such skills should not be practised).

Thanks for reading.

3 thoughts on “…and the classroom stars aligned – in class use of the PHaVE dictionary

    1. hi Adi

      well it was more hacking someone else’s code than building it myself (which is linked in the dictionary) using the list provided by the researchers of the PHaVE list (you can get the raw list from the G+ CL community)

      if you have any more questions let me know
      ta
      mura

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